Post
by SirKicley » Fri Jan 03, 2014 6:28 pm
Hey there Killian. I've been out of the fold for a while, and haven't posted in a minute (about 4 months actually! lol); well i've read this entire thread and most of what I would say has already been said. I can add to it though.....
1) Obviously your preferences and playstyle (and that of your players) may not be perfectly compatible with the notion of Hope not replenishing as you would prefer. Which is okay - others have suggested you not follow the RAW to help. Trust me, many of us (including me) had a hard time with grasping this notion, and my players who grew up on D&D which is a much more "instant gratification" game with routing cure wound spells, etc, are use to just blowing through their resources and replenishing them quickly. Once it was understood just how precious Hope as a mechanic is - and abstracting that to the notion of Hope as an intangible asset to the human (hobbit/elf/dwarf) spirit, it's not something that you would ever want to abuse or take lightly.
2) You mention that the PCs are going Mad and hopeless etc, due to not having Hope. This could very well be the result of your players either assuming it should replenish or perhaps they are playing in a RPG style that has not adapted yet to the rigors of this game setting. If they're burning through them like Fate Points or Hero Points of other RPGs that replenish all the time, then yeah - they're definitely using them outside the intended flavor of the game. If you wish to humor me (and the game as written) try having the players "start over" so to speak on their hope and explain that from this point forward it will return as it has been being done in your game. Hope is a precious commodity that once lost, is forever hard to reaquire. Many stories are abound of people in the real world that experience trauma (war vets, crime victims, disaster victims) that live the rest of their lives broken in spirit and mind. PTSD is a very real and horrible thing that affects so many people - one can abstract that in many cases, this is related to abandonment of Hope. Some find religion and Hope is rekindled. For many, all Hope is lost forever. This is a theme in Tolkien's writing who obviously had religious undertones to his stories. The Shadow of Middle-earth has this very same effect and worse. That all being said, ingenious game-play on the part of the players may remove the need for using so much Hope. The game has a built-in TRAITS and DISTINCTIVE FEATURES and such for players to use creatively, which assists them via auto-successes of many skills. But these have to be utilized to be of benefit. I am not presuming they are not doing this - but in the chance that they have not yet mastered this art, spend some time creatively working together (and reminding them at certain points) to better understand the traits and their potential for truly assisting a character. Once this system is truly understood and appreciate, your players will find that they can succeed in a number of routine areas and will not need to feel inclined to burn all their Hope.
3) Accept failure. This is hard for many players to come to grips. You don't have to succeed on every check. You don't have to hit with every sword-strike. It's not about winning and losing. Many can learn as much from failure as they can from success - in fact you can even earn Advancement Points from just from failing! If there are many instances of near-misses and the players feel a need for over-utilizing hope, perhaps they just need to try different tactics. Move to a different stance to increase success with attacks. Arm with different gear for better protection. Etc. In other words, don't make up for things that can be altered by just burning Hope to overcome it. Find other ways to create success. Eventually upon the characters' advancement via Advancement and Experience Points, they will have more skill points allocated to common and weapon skills and better Valor and Wisdom. This will reduce the occasions of near-misses. On the flip side - by that point, PCs should have used up a fair portion of their non-replenishing hope. With that in mind think of it this way: veterans within the world in real life and in Middle-earth which is represented in TOR - are highly skilled, but low on hope. Contrastly new recruits are low on skills but with high-hopes. We've seen this portrayed in so many media forms of TV shows or movies or books; the old griseled veteran detective with his elite skills but haunted past of previous cases and now is cantankerous, distant from others, cold-hearted, bittter, doesn't want new partners...etc...this cliche is seen thousands of times; while the rookie is eager, and naive and fumbling around with his walkie-talkie, but he sure has a lot of hope for the department and the crime-fighting he's doing. (Kevin Bacon in The Following vs the young agent who loved his book is a recent prime example). What you don't want to happen is to later have highly skilled heroes who have had replenished and abundant hope - which will highly skew games and make them non-challenging at all. They'll never fail, will never be affected by Shadow, and thus a large part of the flavor of the world and theme of the game will not be experience. With this in mind, Hope should be valued, and not something one will want to burn up or burn out on. It should be used sparing and in grave moments of need! Of course if you WANT a game in which the depravity of the Shadow is not felt and one where the characters are super bad-asses never to fail- by all means, there's no "wrong" way to play an RPG; so long as you're having fun.
4) One way to replenish SMALL amounts of hope is tie their replenishment to some event, locale, or other that the heroes experience. Perhaps a PC witnesses another PC selflessly save the life of another PC. There are moments in the books/movies that inspire hope for the heroes. Seeing Rivendell for the first time. Aragorn seeing the Argonath "Long have I wished to see the kings of old" Sam seeing Moria for the first time "Now that's an eye-opener, make no mistake". Find a way to tie in an important aspect of each character's back-story individually. A dwarf that hopes to see the gate of Moria or stare into the Mirrormere. An elf that would love to meet Galadriel. A Hobbit that years to see the hill of Carrock where Bilbo was delivered safely by an eagle. Etc etc. These are story-based narratives that build character within a character, and rewards them with an in-game benny of a Hope Point. Similarly, you can tie Hope Points into game-action narration by allowing a "FREE" Hope Point use (not a replenishment) - during a pitched battle, something fantastic happens, or a rescuing cavalry or effort or other such pivotal and motivating occurence transpires - like Eomer returning to the Rohirrim to aid Theodred at Helm's Deep. Sometimes, a monumental moment that, which inspires and instill courage can be quite powerful and a free hope point "to be used in this battle" is a good way of experiencing that narrated bolster within game mechanics.
In the end, this is your game, and your preferences along with your players are paramount. But I do believe this is the way that the game was intended to be experienced. It's a formula that has so far proven effective in my games and experiences. Most of my players still have a fair number (most) of their Hope points; but this is because they know the importance of not running low on Hope - but mechanically and figuratively.
Hope this helps,
Robert
